Sunday 15 May 2022 05:04 PM Why workers may NEVER return to the office leaving the CBD to die trends now
City centres across Australia are a shadow of their former bustling metropolises since the Covid pandemic ushered in a shift to remote working - and they may stay that way.
Melbourne's world record lockdown contributed to a major transition in the city's working culture with the CBD still relatively empty.
While Sydney's daily average weekday commuter trips are down 55 per cent from 2019 levels.
Google movement data shows visits to workplaces in general in the NSW capital were down 20 per cent and visits to entertainment precincts are still 15 per cent down from two years ago.
Experts say employers may not legally be able to force workers back into office, meaning central cities may never bounce back to pre-Covid levels.
Melbourne saw 250,000 office workers enter the CBD per day pre-pandemic, but that figure is now closer to 80,000 (pictured: Melbourne in March)
The Victorian capital spent 262 days under stay-at-home orders through the course of the pandemic, with the city's work from home mandate only lifting in February 25.
Despite government advice stating office workers should be heading in three days per week, pedestrian levels in the CBD remain extremely low.
'What Covid has done is accelerate trends that were already occurring, including technological change and the changing nature of work,' Sydney's Mayor Clover Moore said.
'But economic clusters like technology, finance, media and entertainment … thrive on proximity to one another and remain focused here in our city.'
She said local and state governments were working on incentives to get people back into the city.
In February CBD cafe transactions in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane were at 40 per cent of pre-Covid levels.
And while those figures from ANZ Research were on the tail end of the Omicron wave, senior economist Adelaide Timbrell said the data showed a 'structural change in the way people work'.
The once bustling Rocks area of Sydney, popular with international and domestic tourists alike, became a ghost town during lockdown and still hasn't recovered (pictured)
'Between the 2020 wave of Covid and the Delta outbreak in the second half of 2021 Sydney and Melbourne café transactions didn't get up anywhere near where they were in 2019... even when there really wasn't much of COVID within those cities'.
'We can even see in the Brisbane CBD where there really wasn't any COVID for most of 2021, but it was still showing less café transactions on weekdays in the CBD.'
Consulting firm
